Pat B

05 February 2015 @ 05:40 pm

There is this feral cat hanging around our yard. I am no stranger to cats, I have two, my friends I rent the other side of the duplex to have 5, and the neighbor to the other side has 1. All 8 get along reasonably and wander in and out of each other's houses (we all have cat doors) and eat each other's food.

But now there is Yellow Cat moving in. He's been hanging around for several months and he is NOT tame. He has already beaten up on my dominate cat -- I just spent $1000 on treating an abscess. We've been talking about trying to gentle him down some and find a no-kill shelter to take him because we can't let him keep beating up our cats. Then today, he got into my house and was threatening my cats. I was trying to shoo him out the door, stupidly got too close, and he bit me. Not bad, but the skin is broken and bleeding in 4 or 5 places.

I know what I should do. I should call animal control. But if they can't locate an owner in 72 hours, they'll put him down and I know this is my fault. I knew he was scared and feeling cornered and I misjudged and got too close. I could lie to animal control about what he looks like, or just not report, but then I would have to get the rabies shots and that is not good. And we have to do something eventually -- he's too aggressive to let hang around our other cats. I don't know if we would ever be able to get him to a state where a no-kill shelter would accept him. I really don't know what to do.

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30 April 2013 @ 05:44 am

What we talk about when we talk about pockets

One thing about this that bothered me some time back -- there was a discussion (on TV, radio, I don't remember) that talked about when there was an emergency, like in an office building, men were wise enough to just get up and go, while women insisted on going back to their desks for their purses. I thought, "Yeah, but men have pockets! They have their 'purse' with them at all times!"

See, if my ex-husband had just walked out, he would have had with him emergency doses of his most important meds, cash and credit cards, his cell phone, keys to his car and house, ID, emergency contact numbers, and a pocket knife -- all important urban survival tools. I would have had none of that without my purse. I would have at least hesitated and considered going back for it, and not because I am "foolishly attached to things just as things" . Pockets make a difference! Which is one reason I love my jeans! (Mom jeans, that is, with lovely big pockets).

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hitchhiker at What we talk about when we talk about pockets

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kylecassidy at What we talk about when we talk about pockets

This post is about pockets, feminism, design, autonomy and common sense. Please feel free to repost or link to it if you know people who'd benefit from the discussion.

A few weeks ago

trillian_stars and I were out somewhere and she asked "Oooh, can I get a cup of coffee?" and I thought "why are you asking me? You don't need permission." But what I discovered was that her clothes had no pockets, so she had no money with her.

Mens clothes have pockets. My swimsuits have pockets. All of them do, and it's not unusual, because, what if you're swimming in the ocean and you find a fist full of pirate booty in the surf? You need somewhere to put it. Men are used to carrying stuff in their pockets, you put money there, you put car keys there. With money and car keys come power and independence. You can buy stuff, you can leave. The idea of some women's clothes not having pockets is baffling, but it's worse than that -- it's patriarchal because it makes the assumption that women will either carry a handbag, or they'll rely on men around them for money and keys and such things. (I noticed this also when Neil & Amanda were figuring out where her stuff had to go because she had no pockets.) Where do women carry tampons? Amanda wondered, In their boyfriend's pockets, Neil concluded.

I then noticed that none of

trillian_stars' running clothes had pockets. Any pockets. Which is (as they always say on "Parking Wars") ridikulus. Who leaves the house with nothing? (It's not a rhetorical question, I actually can't think of anybody).

We fixed some of this by getting this runners wrist wallet from Poutfits on Etsy -- it holds money, ID, keys ... the sort of stuff you'd need. Plus you can wipe your nose on it. It solves the running-wear problem, but not the bigger problem.

Clickenzee to Embiggen!

The bigger problem is that people who design women's fashions are still designing pants and jackets that have no pockets. In fact, this jacket we got last December has ... no pockets. It's not a question of lines or shape, it's a question of autonomy.

Clickenzee to Embiggen

So I'm asking my friends who design women's clothes to consider putting pockets in them, they can be small, they can be out of the way, they can be inside the garment, but space enough to put ID, and cash and bus tokens. And maybe a phone. (And if you can design a surreptitious tampon stash, I'm sure Neil & Amanda & a lot of other people would appreciate it as well.)

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09 November 2012 @ 12:49 pm

(no subject)

Determination over all!

Tags: crazy cats

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22 June 2012 @ 02:09 pm

Bad News / Good News

Well, the bad news is that tube feeding a cat can be very messy. The good news is, it seems to be effective as well.

When I went to pick him up yesterday, my poor baby all groggy from surgery and with a tube coming out of him, I started having second thoughts again, as usual. I started thinking that I over-reacted and subjected my poor kitty to unneccessary things and surely, if I had only given him another day or two, he would have started eating again. But the staff at the vet had not been able to get him to eat either and it was now 3 days without eating. He had lost 7% of his body weight since Monday.

He got his first tube feeding this morning. While it clearly felt odd and he didn't like it, he didn't fight too much either. And when we were taking a pause, he actually licked up some of his "tube food" from a spoon! Not much, but something. And when it was over, he didn't run and hide, but sat next to me on the sofa, giving himself a through grooming -- the first time I have seen him grooming himself this week. So it's clearly what was needed.

Plus his fever is gone, and the tests and x-rays still aren't finding anything wrong. Hopefully the antibiotics are kicking in and the tube feeding will break the cycle of "Feel Crappy --> Don't Eat --> Feel Crappier --> Eat Less" etc.

I will try to get pictures of him with his tube this weekend. He goes in for a re-check on Monday, and it would be real nice if he is eating enough orally by then that we could take the tube out. But I'm not going to put pressure on him or me -- he'll be ready when he's ready. I do think we'll get there, though. (It does make it much easier to give pills though!)

Current Mood: hopeful

hopeful

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21 June 2012 @ 12:10 pm

(no subject)

I could use some prayers/good thoughts for one of my fur-babies, Malcolm. He started getting sick on Monday, running a fever, lethargic, and not wanting to eat much. Antibiotics have taken care of the fever, but it is now Thursday afternoon and he hasn't eaten a thing since Tuesday morning. He won't even lick up tuna juice. This can be very dangerous in cats, especially overweight cats, and can lead to liver failure.

He's been to the vet twice, and is back again. He is getting a feeding tube put in today and some x-rays to see if there is anything else going on. He's 7, which is getting up there for a cat, but he's been pretty heathy up until now. I've gone through these kind of extended illness, big medical intervention stuff before with cats, but it was usually end-of-life care for 19-20 year olds. He can be a major pain in the butt, but he's way too young to lose him now!

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24 May 2012 @ 09:10 am

What the cat dragged in

OK, I know Malcolm hunts; I've seen him in the back yard with a mouse in his mouth (which explains why he isn't losing weight as fast as the vet would like, even on the expensive diet cat food). Also, he and Kaylee have a tendency to bring small snakes into the house to play with. These they do not eat, they just leave the bodies laying around. Fortunately, they tend to mummify rather than rot. Well, except for that one that managed to crawl into the pocket of my jeans on the floor before dying -- that body ended up flying in the air over a retail counter when I went to pay for purchases the next day, scaring the shit out of the cashier and me, both. But that's another story.

So when both cats were excitedly hunkering over something in the middle of the living room floor this morning, I figured it was another snake. I got up to rescue it, which distracted the cats -- which is when Malcolm's bird got loose and started flying around. My first thought was to dash back to the bedroom to put on some clothes. Since most of our neighbors are Muslim (most of the women wear hijab and a couple of them niqab), I didn't think chasing a bird out of the house while semi-naked would gain me any "Good Neighbor" points. The sculpture of a zombie in my front flowerbed is enough to overcome already.

But when I got back into the living room the bird was nowhere in sight,and the cats were laying around with expressions of "No, Mama, we didn't lose anything. What is this "bird" object you are referring to?" I eventually found the bird and threw a towel over it to capture it. It looked like an adolescent, and didn't have any obvious injuries, so it got a lecture about stupid teen-age behavior and how to recognize and stay away from danger, and was released outside. It promptly flew off into the bushes across the street, but I don't have high hopes for it having a long lifespan. It was appallingly easy for both Malcolm and me to catch. But it did get the day off to an exciting start.

Tags: crazy cats

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13 May 2012 @ 09:02 pm

Just Say No!

I think my cat Mal is a little too sensitive to the nip. I gave them some when they were mostly kittens, but Kaylee was never really interested, and Mal would roll around in it and make a big mess. But recently a friend gave me some of her old nip and I thought I would see how they would react. This wasn't the good stuff, this was older, stale nip that her cats were turning up their noses at.

It did not go well. Mal ate all his nip, went over and chased his sister off to eat her nip, then started beating her up for looking at him funny (as in serious rolling around and yowling at each other). After I intervened and Kaylee ran off, he spent a half hour with his turbo track toy, obsessively rolling the ball around and around the circular track, then threw up on the carpet and passed out on the sofa. He is now snoring away, while Kaylee looks at me accusingly like "What did you do to him, Mama?"

I think I need to not give him nip anymore. He's a mean drunk.

Tags: crazy cats

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12 May 2012 @ 02:11 pm

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10 May 2012 @ 12:46 pm

(no subject)

Same-sex marriage has been in the news lately, good and bad, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Like the President, my thinking has been evolving on the matter. What you hear from antis a lot is that “This would change the definition of marriage!” My first reaction is “Of course not! In fact, it’s strengthening the definition of marriage!” But as I think about it more, I have come to realize they are right. We are changing the definition of marriage.

But here’s the thing: We’ve been changing that definition for a long, long time.

So, long winded, but here’s the point. The question is not, “Is the definition of marriage going to change?”, that’s a given. It’s been changing for thousands of years and will continue to change for thousands more, however this issue is decided. Viewed from one angle, this is no real change, and although it is a radical change viewed from another angle, no more so than other changes made in the last few decades that are now commonly accepted. The real question is, “How are we going to change marriage?” Are we going to follow the trend of giving more and more freedom to individuals to make their own choices, with minimal government involvement, or are we going to reverse that into a more restrictive model where the government has the ability to make choices for you in your most intimate relationships? Because, make no mistake, people are going to continue to fall in love, commit to each other, and form families (with or without children), whether the government recognizes those relationships legally or not. That’s just what people do and have always done since we first became people. Are we going to let the government decide which families are valuable and which can be thrown away, or are we going to stay true to the long held principle that strong families make for a strong society and extend protection to ALL families?

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18 January 2012 @ 09:29 pm

(no subject)

You know, I wonder if, when Newt fires all the school janitors, their kids would be considered poor enough to do for pocket change the job their parent used to do to earn a living? And why, in this time of massive unemployment, all the re-thugs are so thrilled with an idea that only puts even more people out of work?

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